


Erosion

by lilith_babylon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:29:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3161261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_babylon/pseuds/lilith_babylon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the kinkmeme prompt, <i>The Teselecta refused to help. River refused to kill him. The soothsayer was locked in a tower and tortured both by his keepers and by the wrongness of time. One of his keepers was named Williams. </i> Cross-posted to the dont_wander_off lj community.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Erosion

**Author's Note:**

> If you've seen this elsewhere under a locked post in the archive, it's all right; that is my alter ego account but I'm moving this story over here as well to post it more publicly :)

Time is bleeding.

He's quite sure he used to know why. Now he doesn't even know why he can feel it when no one else does, but he can. Chronology seeps out of him as he wastes away against cold stone in the tower. His cells age, his muscles deteriorate until the shackles grind against the bone with only the thinnest translucent veil of skin to cushion the wounds. It's only him that the seconds touch; he can feel a distorted pocket of forever around everything else, giving them all just the illusion of moving, thinking, doing, feeling.

Time is bleeding, and it's taking him with it. Numbness creeps like leprosy up his fingertips and toes in its wake. White static noise settles in his brain where thoughts used to be. Sometimes--nights, days, he isn't sure those exist anymore--sometimes he can't move, and it's not because of the heavy chains; it's because he's forgotten how.

Time is bleeding, taking him with it, and he hates it with every cell he has left. Maybe that's why he taunts the guards, because feeling something is better than feeling nothing at all.

He quips at them, drags his feet and smiles insolently, inviting a blow here and a cut there, enough to break the skin but never enough to break the hold of this moment, now and forever. There's one guard in particular, that sparks something deep inside him; hope or hopelessness, he can't tell the difference. He thinks . . . he thinks he used to know him in another life. He wonders if violence is the human body's way of rebelling against the truth of temporal schisms.

He invites worse from that guard if he can get it; kicks and scrapes, explosions of speed slamming him against the wall, hard muscles twisted with unnatural strength pressing him against the stone and holding him there. The heat of breath upon his neck, echoed in lower places. Angry threats whispered in his ear.

"You think you can't die here, soothsayer?"

A memory surfaces and falls away again: a mirrored lake, silent and dead as the sand around it. I think I'm the only one who can, he says or tries to, but a clammy hand covers his mouth so he can't answer. His ragged robes are thrust aside and he wants to sink to the floor but is held fast. He feels the throbbing need press against him, skin on warm skin, and he can't stop it. He feels himself growing hard in response, betrayed by his own treacherous body.

"Caesar isn't the only one you can entertain."

It's not the guard's fault. Free will is an illusion here as much as anything else. He thinks he may be pulling half the strings and he can't remember who has the rest. But if it hurts enough, he can map out the boundaries of this sickness. He can feel where he ends and where the disintegrating nothingness begins. It's like picking at a scab he knows will never heal, because it will never have time to scar. Every time he feels it, it's worse.

The hard walls are unforgiving, and oh, it hurts. It hurts more than he could ever have imagined, because afterward, when he collapses trembling on the floor, the guard follows him down, landing hard on his knees beside him. The touch at the side of his face is maddeningly tender, the guard meets his eyes and at that moment he can suddenly feel the seconds . . . eating away at them both. The pocket buckles and wavers.

"Time . . ." the guard says, his eyes wide and afraid. "There's something wrong . . . with . . . Doctor? Who . . . who are--?"

The fixed point settles again, and he closes his eyes against the pain. He hears the guard cleaning himself up and lazily heading for the cell door.

Time is bleeding, emptying him from the inside out. He thinks there might be a way to stop it, or maybe it's just something else he's forgotten.


End file.
